Author:Niall Ferguson
DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR
If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople.
By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe - Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland - would have seemed little better. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs and Incas. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened.
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.
Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history.
Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation ... he writes with splendid panache
—— The TimesOne of the world's leading historians
—— Hamish McRae , Independent[Praise for The Ascent of Money] Beautifully written... Breathtakingly clever
—— Martin Van Weyer , Sunday Telegraph[Praise for The Ascent of Money] The tales he tells of boom and bust, of triumph and disaster, of bubbles that inflate... are the very essence of financial history
—— Bill Emmott , Financial Times[Praise for The Ascent of Money] An often enlightening and enjoyable tour through the underside of great events, a lesson in how the most successful great powers have always been underpinned by smart money
—— Robert Skidelsky , New York Review of BooksAmbitious ... a pleasure to read ... thought-provoking
—— New ScientistA sweeping yet personal challenge to assumptions Western society makes about the relationships between individuals and the finite hours in a given day
—— Time MagazineOdell argues convincingly that our daily experience is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside
—— Irish IndependentThe best beach read of the year ... Read it, and then think deeply about how you are reading your own time
—— The Media LeaderOdell's latest book, Saving Time, is great at analysing where a lot of our notions about how to use our time came from (hint: capitalism).
—— RTE IrelandOne of President Barack Obama's 'Favourite books of 2019'
—— President Barack Obama on How To Do Nothing[a] fascinating and timely history
—— Ian Pindar , GuardianIncredibly vivid
—— Press AssociationI've read lots of books about economics this last year. This is one of the very best... Superb
—— StandardA fluent and indirect paean to Keynesian economics... this resonates with the contemporary turmoil in global financial markets
—— Financial TimesAhamed unravels the story of the most terrible financial collapse in history from the perspective of the four men who were largely responsible: the leading central bankers in the United States, Britain, France and Germany
—— Mail on Sunday[a] very readable portrait of the bankers who allowed the Great Depression to happen
—— TelegraphPossibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level
—— Stuart Weir, co-founder of Charter 88, former editor of the New StatesmanHe has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms
—— Martin Vander Weyer , Literary ReviewLively and well written book
—— Toby Young , Mail on SundayA welcome account of how the sun is never allowed to set on the British empire's old islands, whose fiscal pirates hoard the tax-free treasures of the rich
—— Geoffrey Robertson , New Statesman, Books of the YearShaxson delves into capitalism's secret nooks and tells us about how a culture of secrecy can perpetuate itself. Very interesting
—— William Leith , Evening StandardA compelling read [...] an important and very much a live topic, it'll take you a few hours to read the book but it will be a worthwhile investment of time
—— Peter Magee , BookbagWhat makes this such a good read for the layman is that the author employs all his journalistic skill (he used to work at Reuters) to illustrate his arguments and uses real examples to real examples to illustrate complex issues
—— John Arlidge , Sunday TimesThis book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in
—— Brian Maye , Irish TimesThis engrossing book about the offshore banking racket, with its eye-opening scrutiny of tax havens and the suited scoundrels who profit from them, will make you think again about the murkier side of the City...This first-rate forensic work ends with a plea that the closed City "must be abolished and submerged into a...fully democratic London"
—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent[An] informed polemic against finance capital
—— Oliver Kamm , The TimesNow more than a decade old, this is still the best introduction to the world of tax havens
—— Economist, *Summer Reads of 2022*
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